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The Global 100: Fractured Futures At The Richest Law Firms In The World (2017)
October 7, 2017
[T]his year’s Global 100 survey suggests that conditions for the world’s largest law firms are getting even more challenging. Total Global 100 revenue rose just 2.8 percent in 2016, to $99.3 billion—the lowest annual gain since the recession and the second consecutive year of slowing growth. (Group revenue is still likely to pass $100 billion next year for the first time ever, however, requiring an increase of just 0.7 percent to hit that milestone.) Having fallen by 2.1 percent in 2015,...
October 7, 2017
[T]his year’s Global 100 survey suggests that conditions for the world’s largest law firms are getting even more challenging. Total Global 100 revenue rose just 2.8 percent in 2016, to $99.3 billion—the lowest annual gain since the recession and the second consecutive year of slowing growth. (Group revenue is still likely to pass $100 billion next year for the first time ever, however, requiring an increase of just 0.7 percent to hit that milestone.) Having fallen by 2.1 percent in 2015,...
Stanford Law + Design Summit
September 30, 2017
Design thinking and its application in the legal profession is trending. The Stanford event was one of THREE (unrelated)...
September 30, 2017
Design thinking and its application in the legal profession is trending. The Stanford event was one of THREE (unrelated)...
PwC, the Accounting Giant, Will Open a Law Firm in the U.S.
September 29, 2017
Law firms already elbowing one another for multinational clients will soon have a new competitor: The Big Four accounting firm PwC, formerly known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, plans to open a law firm in Washington, D.C., next week. ILC Legal, nonetheless, aims to vie with big law firms as a one-stop shop offering multinational companies access to other PwC services, including tax consulting and its network of 3,200 lawyers spread across 90 countries. The firms in that network operate separately but follow...
September 29, 2017
Law firms already elbowing one another for multinational clients will soon have a new competitor: The Big Four accounting firm PwC, formerly known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, plans to open a law firm in Washington, D.C., next week. ILC Legal, nonetheless, aims to vie with big law firms as a one-stop shop offering multinational companies access to other PwC services, including tax consulting and its network of 3,200 lawyers spread across 90 countries. The firms in that network operate separately but follow...
Justin Kan’s Secretive Legal Startup Debuts As A Different Kind of Law Firm
September 24, 2017
Last April, reports surfaced that Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur Justin Kan was looking to raise — and then in June did raise — $10 million for an initial round of funding for a startup that would “revolutionize legal services.” The name of the startup was known, Atrium LTS, but little else, except that it would somehow involve software designed to streamline the work of law firms. Today we get the rest of the story, as Kan’s startup officially starts up. Kan is not a lawyer...
September 24, 2017
Last April, reports surfaced that Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur Justin Kan was looking to raise — and then in June did raise — $10 million for an initial round of funding for a startup that would “revolutionize legal services.” The name of the startup was known, Atrium LTS, but little else, except that it would somehow involve software designed to streamline the work of law firms. Today we get the rest of the story, as Kan’s startup officially starts up. Kan is not a lawyer...
Legal Sector Gains Modest 100 Jobs in August
September 15, 2017
After the legal sector took a major hit in July losing 3,400 jobs (nearly wiping out all the gains of the previous six months), be thankful for small favors. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the legal sector gained back a modest 100 jobs in August. Of course, BLS frequently makes post-report adjustments to its monthly labor stats as more accurate information is acquired so the final figure may eventually change for better or worse. Also noteworthy is a report by Bloomberg Law that...
September 15, 2017
After the legal sector took a major hit in July losing 3,400 jobs (nearly wiping out all the gains of the previous six months), be thankful for small favors. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the legal sector gained back a modest 100 jobs in August. Of course, BLS frequently makes post-report adjustments to its monthly labor stats as more accurate information is acquired so the final figure may eventually change for better or worse. Also noteworthy is a report by Bloomberg Law that...
Applicants Plunged 52%, And Acceptance Rates Increased 20%, At Non-T14 Law Schools From 2008 To 2016
August 19, 2017
U.S. News & World Report, Less Competitive Law School Admissions a Boon for Applicants: U.S. News data reveal that the average number of applicants at the top 14 schools in the Best Law Schools rankings was 20.6 percent lower for the entering class of 2016 than it was for the entering class of 2008. Meanwhile, the average number of applicants at lower-ranked law schools plunged 52.3 percent between 2008 and 2016. U.S. News data shows that acceptance rates at the top 14 law schools...
August 19, 2017
U.S. News & World Report, Less Competitive Law School Admissions a Boon for Applicants: U.S. News data reveal that the average number of applicants at the top 14 schools in the Best Law Schools rankings was 20.6 percent lower for the entering class of 2016 than it was for the entering class of 2008. Meanwhile, the average number of applicants at lower-ranked law schools plunged 52.3 percent between 2008 and 2016. U.S. News data shows that acceptance rates at the top 14 law schools...
Lipshaw on Lawyering by Artificial Intelligences
August 19, 2017
Jeffrey M. Lipshaw (Suffolk University Law School) has posted Halting, Intuition, Heuristics, and Action: Alan Turing and the Theoretical Constraints on AI-Lawyering (Savannah Law Review, forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This is a reflection on the relationship of lawyering and artificial intelligence. Its goal is a better understanding of the theoretical constraints of the latter. The first part is an assessment of one particular and crucially important aspect in the theory of machine...
August 19, 2017
Jeffrey M. Lipshaw (Suffolk University Law School) has posted Halting, Intuition, Heuristics, and Action: Alan Turing and the Theoretical Constraints on AI-Lawyering (Savannah Law Review, forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This is a reflection on the relationship of lawyering and artificial intelligence. Its goal is a better understanding of the theoretical constraints of the latter. The first part is an assessment of one particular and crucially important aspect in the theory of machine...
Baker McKenzie deploys bespoke AI for M&A
August 13, 2017
The firm will employ new artificial intelligence tools across nine offices to achieve faster and more comprehensive contract...
August 13, 2017
The firm will employ new artificial intelligence tools across nine offices to achieve faster and more comprehensive contract...
Legal Research And AI: Looking Toward The Future
August 4, 2017
I read with interest the recent post by my fellow Above the Law columnist, Bob Ambrogi, on a study about the disparity of results found when using various legal research tools. Those findings caught my attention because I’d encountered that very phenomenon when conducting research for this article. As I tested the built-in AI features of Westlaw and LexisNexis, I noticed that identical queries entered into each platform typically led to very different sets of results. Of course,...
August 4, 2017
I read with interest the recent post by my fellow Above the Law columnist, Bob Ambrogi, on a study about the disparity of results found when using various legal research tools. Those findings caught my attention because I’d encountered that very phenomenon when conducting research for this article. As I tested the built-in AI features of Westlaw and LexisNexis, I noticed that identical queries entered into each platform typically led to very different sets of results. Of course,...
Turns Out Legal Research Services Vary Widely in Results
August 1, 2017
Call me naive, but I would have thought that entering the identical search query on, say, both Westlaw and Lexis Advance would return fairly similar results, at least among the cases ranked highest for relevance. After all, shouldn’t the cases that are most relevant to the query be largely the same, regardless of the research platform? Turns out, the results they deliver vary widely — not just between Westlaw and Lexis Advance, but among several legal research platforms. In fact, in a comparison...
August 1, 2017
Call me naive, but I would have thought that entering the identical search query on, say, both Westlaw and Lexis Advance would return fairly similar results, at least among the cases ranked highest for relevance. After all, shouldn’t the cases that are most relevant to the query be largely the same, regardless of the research platform? Turns out, the results they deliver vary widely — not just between Westlaw and Lexis Advance, but among several legal research platforms. In fact, in a comparison...
